If you boot into system 9 at all and have 10.3 (Panther) installed BACKUP sys 9 data first.

I followed all the instructions to the letter and the next reboot destroyed 200G of info!!!!

It seems Panther is able to destroy ALL drives that have 9.x.x installed. If you have a separate partition or a separate drive or in one case the same partition with system 9 installed it appears that its only a matter of time before 10.3 destroys all the data and possibly the drive. I thought I had made a grievous error but now I have heard
from three different people in other states with the same experience.
If this seems a little over the top allow me to describe the past few days.

I have a G4 DP 1G, 1.2 G ram with One drive, a slave, (IBM 7200rpm 80G) with 9.2.1 installed on the first partition and video projects on the second partition. On the same cable is a Second drive, a master (Maxtor 7200rpm 80G) with 10.3 (with all updates) installed on the first partition and music data on the second. I use 9 a bit and consequently boot directly into 9 (the slave drive) on occasion. After installing 10.3 on the Maxtor it became very slow very quickly - far to many "beachball" appearances, so I did the prebinding. The next time I booted into 9 the machine froze after the first couple of extensions loaded. Odd I thought - its never done that before - so I restarted, same thing. On the third attempt only a grey screen - nothing; then no more mister 9 drive.
Now i'm stuck. The drive would boot back into 10 with the option key down but 9 has vanished. The machine will NO LONGER recognise ANY system 9 drive or ANY SYSTEM 9 CD!!! and I have every system disk for every mac. It gets worse. I took the drive out and put it in another G4 DP 450 as a slave where it booted once and then disappeared from the desktop forever!!!
IT gets worse. The master drive in the 450 (running 9.2 & 10.2) has had its directories (and data?) destroyed by the first drive which was once in the same machine as 10.3 and will not appear on the desktop!!! Nortons, Diskwarrior, and system disks will not see or mount the drive.
Heres the question: How does 10.3 destroy everything on an unrelated 9.2.1 drive.
How does it write something to one HD which then destroys any HD that it comes in contact with running any version of 9 .
How does it make a G4 NO LONGER able to even boot from a system 9 CD!!!
Oh they all boot perfectly from 10 buy they dont see any sys 9

Again I urge everyone to BACKUP anything to do with sys 9 onto an external drive.
What stinks is all of Apples help people dont know anything about this.
If this sounds like paranoia I am currently working with people in
two other states who have lost everything on their 9 drives. One business has LITERALLY THROWN OUT their affected drives they are so scared of getting any drive that has had 10.3 on it anywhere near another machine.

Yes I have finally got one mac to boot into 9 - no thanks to Apple. It took five days on and off and three mornings till 3am, 3 machines, 10 ( yes ten) reinstalls and I now have one of three macs working in 9 again. Wish me luck on the other two macs that currently will not boot.
No it is not a virus its more like a conspiracy.

Answer: never, never, ever, boot into system 9 from a mac that has 10.3 on it,?? do it through classic emulation only.

Did I mention BACKUP? Do it NOW!

Any advice would be appreciated

Martin

ps: have just been called by a person who has just had all their sys 9 data on a flash drive destroyed when they tried to transfer from an iBook running 10.3!!